One-Liner Pitch: OnBeep is developing wearable devices that promise to let groups communicate without ever having to pull out their smartphones.

Why It's Taking Off: The startup aims to change the way groups collaborate in real time.

Jesse Robbins has a tendency to move in the opposite direction of the tech industry. He worked as a systems engineer in the late 1990s, but just as the dot-com bubble was reaching its frothiest point, he decided to take a step back from the industry. The reason? Robbins wanted to become a firefighter.

"It was less satisfying at times," Robbins said of his experience working in tech during that period. "I wanted to find other ways to serve people."

He began training as a part-time firefighter and emergency medical technician for the Palo Alto (California) Fire Department, while continuing to juggle a position as a systems engineer. Then he decided to "leave tech" to get a firefighter position in Seattle. But as it happened, that led him to a job at Amazon. When he wasn't putting out fires in the city, he was putting out fires at Amazon as the company's self-described "master of disaster."

Now, more than a decade later, Robbins has decided to move in the direction of the tech industry for a change and embrace the big trend of the moment: wearables.

For the past year, Robbins has been working with cofounder Greg Albrecht, who also moonlights as an emergency responder, on a startup called OnBeep that is developing wearable communication devices, which promise to help groups communicate in real time without ever having to pull out their smartphones. Some have described the concept for the device as being like a more modern day walkie talkie; Robbins says it was more "inspired" by the futuristic communicator badges in Star Trek.

"It clips to your shirt or coat or blouse or bag strap," he says of the device, which is currently in alpha testing. "It's worn very similar to a badge or a broach and designed to be operated with one hand, a single gesture. You’re able to press or gesture communicate, speak and be heard."

The original inspiration for the idea came from the communication equipment he used in his years working as a firefighter.

"I kept coming back to this idea of bringing real-time group communication, the type of communication that I’ve always been able to use in a lifesaving capacity, to everyone," he says. "I wanted to be able to bring them the same sort of heads up, engaged, in the moment tech that we have when we use [fire department] radios, but that don’t weigh 4 pounds."

OnBeep announced on Wednesday that it has raised $6.25 million in funding led by Avalon Ventures to help launch the first product this year. The startup now has 20 people on staff, including employees who previously worked at Apple, Google and Nextel.

While "wearables" may be a buzzword right now, not all wearable devices have proven successful. Google Glass, for example, has experienced a backlash in recent months. Unlike many gadgets, wearables are typically very visible on the consumer and that much easier to judge. That's an issue of which Robbins is well aware.

"It's a statement, whatever technology decisions, whatever fashion decisions people make, it's a statement about who they are," Robbins says. "We focus a lot on getting out of the Silicon Valley, San Francisco typical tech worker design mentality."

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